Developing International Mindedness Through The UN Goals

An integral part of our school vision is to develop our learners as accountable global citizens. One of the key ways that we do this is through the implementation and development of the UN Sustainable Goals. These global goals have quickly become embedded into our school culture, complimenting the IPC and developing international mindedness throughout our school. This is evident in our learning letters, blogs, newsletters and learning. One way we do this is to have a learning focus at the beginning of each term and also linking our learning to the goals whenever appropriate.

Using real issues such as the goals allows us to give relevance and real-life experiences that the learners may have otherwise missed out on. Raising awareness of global issues supports our learners in developing a deepening understanding of the challenges that we may face in the future.

To complement the development of the goals we also have an after school club called the UN Goalkeepers. For this club, each group chooses one of the goals to focus on. Then they think of a way to help that goal. This club has now become internationally recognized as a model of good practice being featured on the IPC and Teach UN websites. The club organizer and P7 teacher, Craig Jones has also been asked to share this good practice with other educators during the festival of learning in London in July 2018.

Some of the achievements of the club include:

Quality Education (4) For our school in a box project we ran a shoe box appeal to collect school equipment to provide local orphans with better access to education. We managed to collect 41 boxes beating our target of 30.

Clean Water and Sanitation (6) This group raised enough money to fund not one but two water projects for villages in Africa. They did this by running refreshment stands at our school show and by running a cinema night.

No Poverty (1) For this issue we focussed on providing ‘growing shoes’ for orphans in Nigeria. So far they have raised enough money to purchase over 200 shoes. Their target is 300 shoes by the end of term 3. They have done this by running a school tuck shop every Friday during snack time.

Gender Equality (5) Our gender equality group set out to raise awareness around this issue. They looked at slogans on girls clothing and stereotyping. They also run an assembly about how girls are treated in third world countries.

Life Below Water (14) This task was cleverly named the Re-Sakhalin project as it focussed on recycling on Sakhalin Island and keeping plastic out of the oceans. The group leaders started an awareness campaign as well as collecting plastic and depositing it in recycling bins.

Life on Land (15) Our aim for this goal is to plant a mini forest near our school. The team leaders have decided to start a sponsor a tree program so that people have the opportunity to own their own tree.

The hope is that these children are not only contributing to the global community now, but they will continue to do so throughout their adult lives as well.